Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You (Pre-Order)

I have felt the pull of this extravagant wanting elsewhere . . . A meal is a shape. It is a container into which we pour our cravings.

After a thirteen-year relationship came to an end, food journalist Candice Chung found herself losing not only her first love but also her most reliable restaurant review partner. And so when her parents offer to be her new plus-ones, she faces a dilemma: Is it better to eat together in polite silence or to try to broach how, for the past decade, they’ve managed to drift so profoundly apart?

Through shared meals and culinary adventures, Candice and her parents begin to break their silence. Yet when a new relationship begins to bloom, it forces her to try to address what still remains unsaid. To do so, she must find a new vocabulary—a way to unscramble what her family has been trying to express all along. Not through words, but with food.

Set against the backdrop of this burgeoning new relationship, grasped-at date nights mid-pandemic, and an uncertain future across seas, Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You is packed with heart, humour, and those bright-hearted moments around a dinner table that bring us together.